At its Annual Meeting in April 1995, the Renaissance Society of America will be honoring the career of Paul Oskar Kristeller, whose international reputation as a Renaissance scholar is well known to this audience. We are all in debt to Kristeller for what he would proudly entitle his “contributions.” These include, among innumerable others, studies on Marsilio Ficino and the classical and scholastic origins of humanism, a multi-volumed catalogue of the uncatalogued manuscripts in European collections (more than a life work all by itself), and reminders in the form of essays, articles and lectures of the need to adjust our theories and our inclinations to what used to be called, in a simpler age, facts.